They Call Me Lopey: Saga of Wilderness Flying (by William Lopaschuk)

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Bill Lopaschuk knew he wanted to fly when, at the age of eight, he saw his first planes in Whitehorse in 1935. Twelve years later the now 20-year-old took his first flying lesson in the Okanagan Valley. In the years that followed, he flew for five airlines in more than 60 different planes, including the first de Havilland Beaver, and logged more than 25,000 takeoffs and landings. Lopaschuk fought forest fires, flew medivac missions, moved a D7 CAT in the cabin of a single-engine Otter, helped map the mineral potential of northern British Columbia and flew supplies into the remote radar sites on the DEW Line in the Arctic.

And he did it all without the sophisticated navigational and communication technology upon which today's pilots rely. While the stories in They Call Me Lopey are uniquely Bill's, they reflect the life of BC's bush pilots in the days before GPS and Google Earth. His story will appeal to anyone interested in bush pilots, planes, BC's aviation history and the big projects that shaped the province's northern economy.